Live Performance

This post is in reference to my live performance module as part of my final year of Creative Sound and Music at Newport Uni.

In this module I was required to engage in 3 separate performances and play some part in the planning and running of those events.

My first performance was as a dance music DJ at Warehouse 54, Newport. In this performance I was the final act of the night having followed a variety of musical acts and a brief talk about the way music effects people. This was tough to follow as there was such a wide range of music and the mood was constantly changing from one thing to another and it rested on me to pull the night into a light hearted and danceable atmosphere. This was easily achieved by opening up with Gangam Style by Korean Pop Star, Psy. The song set the tone for the rest of the night, and especially with Starships by Nicki Minaj as a follow on track, it was obvious that the rest of the night would be filled with cheesy electronic dance and pop music, from the early 90's to modern day.

The performance went well and I continued to DJ on until the club had emptied out completely.
I thoroughly enjoyed DJing, especially as I only had one request (Gangnam Style, and this request came in just after I loaded the CD into the tray, so it didn't really count), and didn't have to deal with the often moronic requests of an alcohol fueled audience. The DJing technique was simple with simple beat matching, no clever mixing (just switching from one song to the next when it 'feels' right), no attention paid to key matching, and I only played songs that I personally liked, and yet restricted myself to songs that I know are popular and would work well within the set and the environment. This kept both the crowd and myself happy during the performance.

My attitude towards DJing is that when I do DJ, the 'employer' is trusting me to play music that suits the night and the mood, while also knowing that I work in specific areas. Also, because I'm not a resident DJ, I feel no need to play a specific set of songs over and over again as some clubs do. Because I'm doing this entirely for fun, as a hobby, this gives me the freedom to ignore requests and go with my own plan (once I have picked an opening song, I often plan 5 or 6 songs ahead, which leaves about 30 minutes until a 'free' moment to put in requests - if I feel they'll work with the set - which means I might as well ignore requests) and not worried about getting fired, because I'm not getting hired in the first place.

In short, although I enjoyed DJing, this is not something I wish to develop and take on any further, and certainly not a job I would want to do in order to pay the rent, and this is partly why DJing didn't feature in any of the other recorded performances I am handing in for this module. The other reason DJing hasn't featured in other performances is that my personal experience with the vast majority of venue owners and their staff (namely 'sound engineers', resident DJs and promoters) are difficult to deal with to the point at which their skills at dealing with the event and all technical duties that go with (as well as their capability of dealing with the public and the artist they've enlisted to perform in a reasonable and sensible manner) it come into question. This has resulted in my severe reluctance to go back to public venues for future performances and is also the reason that a public venue does not appear in any of the videos for the other performances.

The next 2 performance were held in my own living room with an audience of friends, both in the room and via a live stream on the internet. This isn't out of laziness, but rather out of the aforementioned reluctance to deal with 'professional' venues and also the nature of the performances themselves.

The next performance was an improvised ambient electronica set that lasted for as long as I saw fit. The piece was entitled "Beans In The Fridge" because (quoting myself) "It's designed to chill your beans" (chilling ones' 'beans' being another way of saying 'relax' or 'chill out'). I felt that the best place for a person to 'chill their beans' would be in their own living room, or the living room of a friends' house, or in their own room, or whatever room they felt comfortable in during the streaming in Ustream. Candles and red lights were used to set an ambience to the room and various covers were draped over furniture to add some creativity to the atmosphere and hide some of the more ugly and unnatural aspects of a living room. The performance worked as planned with the exception of the poor video and audio quality set my Ustream. Should I decide to repeat the performance in the future, I would use a better camera and a direct feed into the computer, rather than the built in microphone, but for an experiment, it went completely to plan.

The final performance was held once again in my own living room and on a live stream, with the same setting (red lights and candles), but this time I played some acoustic guitar cover songs (namely a rendition of Run To The Hills by Iron Maiden with a 6/8 twist to it, and a cut down version of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, performed more with the Johnny Cash version in mind, effectively making it a cover of a cover), and I sang the vocals myself. This performance was meant to have a very personal, homely feel to it, as if it were just a group of friends gathering together to have a relaxed night in with a guitar, and a friendly invitation extended to people on the internet. With this in mind the performance was a success, ignoring my persistent memory loss with lyrical content, and some chord sequences, which I put down to my lack of practice. My apparent inability to remember the chords and the lyrics to Run To The Hills, however, worked in my favour to create a more comic and light hearted atmosphere (an effect also boosted by doing such an odd, light hearted, and slightly folky take on a very 'heavy' song) and therefore a more friendly feel to the performance. Again, the quality of the stream was an issue (as it was done in the same streaming session as the prior ambient electronica performance) but should I decide to do these again in the future, more care will be taken to ensure a better quality stream for the internet audience.

However, will these last 2 performances in mind, it must be noted that I did them for the same reason I did the DJing - as a hobby, for the fun of it, and essentially because I felt like it. My past experience with performing in professional bands or as a professional solo musician have put me off wanting to perform again in the future in a professional manner. Having had experience in many different kinds of performance types in the past I now feel that if I should continue live performance in the future, it would be a short notice event focused more on the fun of messing around on stage with some music I made and in a very light hearted manner than to satisfy some market demand or local venue. My performances would be reserved for special events (end of degree performance, self organized events, events organized by friends, random jam sessions with friends), and would only require excessive planning if I was to perform electronic music (in which case miming would not be an issue, and the focus would be more on the performance and less on the technical work behind the scenes.)

I also would not wish to use live performance as a method of generating income under any circumstances.

In respect to my final performance for my degree, my current plan is to put together a set of new music I am currently writing (specifically in the Futurepop genre) and perform that live. I intend to approach some friends of mine who are more than adept at creating visual material to accompany the music itself. The final performance would be a futuristic take on 'live' synthpop music.
Once the venue is defined, and the layout of the lights on stage, software may also be used to control the lights to match the songs, or I may simply 'employ' someone to work the lights for me 'on the fly', depending on the nature of the venue and the technical requirements at the time.